


The Connection

by madwomanwithabox



Series: It's A Process [5]
Category: Incredible Hulk (2008), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M, Not So Mild Violence, Science Boyfriends, Science Bros, mild violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-28
Updated: 2012-07-02
Packaged: 2017-11-08 19:11:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/446525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madwomanwithabox/pseuds/madwomanwithabox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coming back from a transformation stopped being scary and quite so uncomfortable ages ago, and it's usually because Tony is there. This time, however, something is definitely not right...he's just too out of it to realize what's different...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Loose Wire

**Author's Note:**

> I finally did it: I wrote a fic with plot and chapters and everything. And if we're real lucky? Something might happen in this installment.
> 
> And I promise: I won't make you wait horribly long. Part 2 is nearly done, it just needs some...work. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to stare at it until the words make sense.
> 
> Oh, and unbeta'd, untested, unseen...blame me if it sucks, leave flowers if it does not. Ready? Good.
> 
> Onward and upward.

“He wouldn’t let you come back.”

His head was killing him as the words touched his ears. Automatically, Bruce fell back on well-honed reflexes developed from years of waking up in strange places, ravaged by the change. First step was gauging what the transformation had done to him physically before assessing where he was and how much trouble he was in, because he could do nothing about the latter two if he was unable to physically function.

Thus far, the problems at hand were dehydration, potassium buildup in his extremities, and concussive cellular damage...that translated to the massive headache he was sporting, being sore from head to toe, and suffering from the kind of ache deep in his bones that told him the Hulk did more than get a good workout: he’d been around for far too long.

“Yeah? He say why?” Bruce deadpanned, wincing as he shook his head a little and started to try and sit up. He was facedown on the floor...there was a blanket over him, thank God for small favors...the floor was cool, slick, not unpleasant. These days, he normally woke up in his own bed thanks to Tony, JARVIS’s soothing synth voice telling him the date, time, and how long he’d slept before he wandered out to fix himself some food...if Tony wasn’t already either in his apartment or roaming the house in Malibu, munching and offering him whatever was in his hands and cajoling him to hit the lab before coffee.

This...there was something wrong with this.

“Actually, he did.”

Bruce blinked, finally managing to push himself to a sitting position and reflexively catching the blanket that slid down around his waist as he winced against the light, struggling against the pounding in his head. He felt slow, clumsy, weak as a kitten...and something was still wrong. The blanket was cheap, military issue, not Tony’s usual million thread count stuff. The smell was wrong, too, the kitchen usually smelled like fresh coffee, and even the lab floor smelled like chemicals, ozone, and burning, not this...neutral, clinical smell of nothing.

“That’s...new. Can I get some water? My head...”

“Something for the pain?”

“Won’t help...’cause of my metabolism. It’s dehydration, I just...water? Please?”

He wasn’t precisely sure how long it was before a bottle was pressed into his hand, but he surmised about a minute passed before the blessedly cool touch of condensation on a cold plastic bottle met his fingers. Still wincing, he focused on drinking slowly, small sips, pausing between swallows as he sat with his head down. Mostly because the stomach cramps wouldn’t be worth the satisfaction, and he had no idea where he was, not precisely, not just yet, so puking all over the place might be a bad thing.

“What’d he say?”

“He said ‘heart.’ Just that, and kept beating his chest. Does that mean anything to you at all?”

Bruce took another swallow of water and tried to focus as he shut his eyes. As much as his head hurt, he knew from experience that he was still in the early stages of changing back, before his cells were fully normalized. He could almost feel them buzzing, sizzling with radiation if he really tried, and if he shut his eyes, the shards of the dream that was the Other Guy, they were still bright and not too far scattered, if still broken in his head.

_//Red and gold and green...red and gold, flashes of heat and energy, tearing and smashing and simple, primal joy in the destruction...grey and red and gold and green, red and gold, red and gold, that was all that mattered and something else, metal twisting and shouting and red and gold, red and gold and red and gold and red and gold...//_

Shaking his head, he took another swallow. “Not...not really. You said...he wouldn’t let me come back.”

“No. When we found you, none of us could get anywhere near you. We managed to convince you... _him_ that we were trying to help. He wouldn’t let go until I promised I’d tell you what he said.”

“What...where was...”

_//Red and gold and green...flashes of heat and energy, sounds of gunfire, the world exploding around them...tearing at knotted gray limbs, flesh tearing like gravel in his hands, beating something half to death with his prize...grey and red and gold and green, red and gold, that was all that mattered...metal twisting under stone, an explosion of sparks and a familiar voice shouting and red and gold, red and gold and red and gold...//_

“Bruce.”

The bottle was almost empty now. His head hurt far less, letting him blink and squint up at the warm, unobtrusive voice that he was only just realizing was too high, too soft...unfamiliar and alien, it wasn’t the voice he was used to hearing during this harsh, painful transitional period. There were no familiar touches, strong hands working to ease the aches and idle quips to distract him from being completely miserable until his cells were back where they belonged...

“...Natasha?”

He had a feeling she might have been smiling sadly, apologizing without words, if the light in her eyes wasn’t so grim. Bruce liked her for that: pragmatic yet not without feeling, and he decided she wasn’t a bad person to wake up near. She would have been...good...if the question wasn’t there to be asked.

“Where’s Tony?”

“He’s locked himself in the lab.” She explained simply, still grim and drawn. “He helped us get you back here, then took off. About an hour in, he engaged the privacy locks, none of us are sure how to break them, so we waited for you.” She paused, her neutral expression darkening with a frown. “You... _he_ was standing in front of Tony when we reached you guys. If Thor hadn’t been there, someone could have been seriously hurt...he was going to kill anyone that got near Tony. I haven’t seen him like that since...the first time I met him.”

Bruce drew the blanket around his waist and struggled to get to his feet. Natasha was at his side instantly, trying to help him up. He realized then, suddenly sick with the revelation, that he was in the cell...the same one they’d replaced after the first was destroyed, a cell that hadn’t been used or mentioned since. Not where he was concerned, anyway...others had gone in there, the worst of the worst, but not him...never him.

 _He_ knew the difference now, Tony had seen to that. He knew friend from foe, and he listened to Tony. _Really_ listened to him, he even took orders when he knew he had to...

_//Red and gold and green...red and gold, that was all that mattered, high-powered energy weapons firing, bodies and limbs like stone...tearing them apart, ripping attack pods from the air...grey and red and gold and green...metal twisting, crushing under bands of stone, red and gold shouting, red and gold and red and gold...and something else, something else something else red and gold and something else and red and help and red and gold and red...//_

“He said ‘heart?’ That was it?” Bruce asked, trying to blink the shards into some semblance of order that he could better understand, to reach that thread he knew connected the feelings and flashes deep in his brainstem, fresh information that would slip away if he didn’t _force_ it to make sense.

Natasha watched him with clear, steady eyes and nodded. “Just said ‘heart,’ over and over, and beat his chest. I promised I would tell you, and he seemed...surprised. Then he finally sat down...”

“And let me back in.” Bruce murmured.

_//Red and gold and green...red and gold and help and green, red and gold, that was all that mattered...red and gold was all that mattered...//_

“Dr. Banner?...Bruce?”

“Get me some clothes.” He rasped. When he turned to look into Natasha’s eyes, he swore he could see pinpricks of emerald green reflected back in her wide, startled eyes.

“Bruce...”

It was hard, but he drew a shaky breath and shook his head.

“It’s me...it’s me, I swear. Just...I need clothes. Then I need you to help me bust the lab door down. I think I know what the Other Guy was trying to do.”

“And?...”

“And if Tony’s still alive, I think I’m gonna kill him.”


	2. Plugging In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being unconscious never bodes well for Tony. Waking up can be horrifying...this time, however, it might not be so bad. Someone's looking out for him...and may be just as grateful as he is that Tony isn't dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...remember that part when I said I'd have this installment posted right away? Yeah, I lied. But not on purpose. Trust me, I'm paying for having spent my whole weekend chasing a five and three year old pair of cousins around.  >.>
> 
> This one is uber wordy, but per the usual? Another segment isn't far away. I thought they were going to do stuff this time. Well...
> 
> Read and see. Per the usual, nobody else has seen this, so all unbeta'd suckitude belonga me.

“Down...down...no, up a little...good, Dum-E, thanks.”

Voices...oh, that wasn’t good. Tony would have sworn he was hung over if his head felt different. No, he knew that headache with intimate familiarity, the slow throb that leapt like electricity at the tiniest sound or the smallest ray of light. No, this headache was far more sinister than a simple hangover. It felt like someone had tried to split his skull open with a cleaver, and his mouth was stuffed full of cotton. It brought back the smell of wet stone, rust, and woodsmoke that set off a distant, primal scream of terror in the back of his brain.

There was bright light behind his closed eyelids, too bright, so he wasn’t in a cave...machines beeping, quiet and unobtrusive without the echo of stone or the distant drip of water, so he _definitely_ wasn’t in a cave...

_“Sir, I believe Mr. Stark is regaining consciousness.”_

“...well, with the elevated metabolism, we knew this would happen. Pulse rate elevated?”

_“Beyond safe parameters. Shall I sedate him?”_

“Probably a good idea...U! Check the assembly, I want to know how we’re coming along. JARVIS? Dope him.”

_“Very good, sir.”_

Tony wanted to open his mouth to protest, but things were rapidly getting foggy and distant, and his mouth wasn’t responding to the commands of his brain. It was dark, and warm, and...’

* * * * * * * * * *

 _“...the energy weapons the Sha’ral used have degraded the polarization of the electromagnet currently keeping the shrapnel in your chest from entering your heart.”_

_Tony sat at his workstation, staring at the diagram on the translucent screen, giving him a play by play of just how fucked he was, complete with a transparent human body simulating the entire fight, replicating every blow he’d been dealt._

_“Estimated time left?” he asked, his gaze never leaving the screen._

_“Seventy six hours, sir.” JARVIS replied, and Tony could hear the regret in his voice. Sure, it was a figment of his imagination, JARVIS’s vocal synthesizers couldn’t express emotion, but Tony was pretty well convinced that JARVIS had perfected the art of choosing the right cadence and collections of words to make emotions evident._

_“To add insult to injury,” he continued, “the heat of the initial blast combined with the force the alien used to crush the armor has both fused the reactor to the casing and driven the entire unit deeper into your chest. Hence the bleeding you were so...insistent about hiding.”_

_“So the only way to fix this is to replace the magnet, maybe even the reactor.”_

_“Which cannot be done without removing the entire casing shaft.”_

_“Meaning I’m more or less up the creek without a proverbial paddle.”_

_“With the added pressure on the cardiac wall, your likelihood of surviving a procedure of this nature is...low.” JARVIS replied carefully. “You should not have survived the initial one...without a surgeon of Dr. Yinsen’s skill...”_

_“I’m toast.” He finished, swallowing thickly as he felt the rumble of a heavy blow dealt somewhere else within the confines of the helicarrier currently flying them back to New York. “Which is kind of crap, I mean, didn’t I do this dying thing once before?”_

_“Yes, sir. I would like to remind you that you did, in fact, survive.”_

_Tony pushed away from the work station to rise and pace. Pacing was good, pacing helped him not to think about the big green asshole in the other room, and the smaller, less green asshole trapped inside of him...the one Tony wanted there with a desperation that was clawing at his gut, making his already compromised heart squeeze harder with a pressure that had nothing to do with the mangled lump of metal and energy in the middle of his chest._

_“Dad’s not here this time, JARVIS.”_

_“No, sir...but Dr. Banner is.”_

* * * * * * * * * *

“...get that out of the way. No...no!...yes. Good, thanks.”

_“Polarity is still degrading, sir.”_

“I know, JARVIS. I’m working as fast as I can. There are no other extra hands around here?”

_“I’m afraid not, sir.”_

“...okay, fine. Get Natasha for me, please?”

_“Right away, sir.”_

“Thanks. Okay, give that back...Dummy, give it back. Thank you.”

_“...sir? Mr. Stark is regaining consciousness again.”_

“Dose him if his heart rate gets above 90 bpm.”

_“As you wish.”_

Tony’s head hurt a little less, but he was in pain. He was in so much pain...why were they waking him up? If he could just sleep through it...just a little while longer...no more dreams, no more remembering...

* * * * * * * * * *

 _He was a little worried when the lab door blew open in an explosion of glass and metal, but not terribly: it was his lab. He blew stuff up all the time, and he was no hypocrite...you know, unless it suited him._

_Then Natasha was storming through the door, and Tony finally got a little more than annoyed. He had privacy locks for a reason, and if she was just going to go busting through them because she thought she was so goddamn hardcore..._

_Bruce was there._

_He was on her heels, shooting into the lab behind her like he’d been fired from a gun, and Tony’s heart did this strange little leap and twist that was probably bad, considering it was being pinned to death beneath a steel cylinder...and fuck, it hurt. It hurt like hell, because Bruce finally came back and Tony was out of options. He was going to die, and looking at Bruce was killing him. It just plain hurt to stare at the soft gray dusting his temples, those broad and warm features, those warm..._

_...lethally angry green eyes?_

_It happened almost faster than he could see, Natasha’s sharp cry in Russian his only indicator that anything was wrong before there were familiar hands fisting in his shirt with untold strength, hauling him in roughly, so close he could feel the warm puff of his ragged, furious breathing...and those eyes, glowing, blazing emerald green and full of the kind of rage he had nightmares about..._

_”Bruce?! What the actual--”_

_He never saw the fist that came for his jaw, but he damn sure felt it before everything went black._

* * * * * * * * * *

This time, when he came to, things made a lot more sense and the primal edge of fear was gone. This time, he recognized the familiar acoustics of the room, the blessedly familiar and welcome scent of metal, oil, and the ever present charred smell that was never far away in Tony’s workshop in Malibu.

“No, Dum-E, leave that alone. If Tony wants a shake later, we’ll tell you, alright?”

He opened his eyes slowly, because his head was still pounding. He ached from head to toe, his jaw burned when he tried to flex it, and something felt...much different, deep in his core. The voices in the room and, by the grace of Thor or Odin or whatever God, the lights were muted. Tony wanted to kiss someone for that.

_“Sir, he’s awake.”_

Within seconds, a familiar face came into view...this time, with the eyes he wanted to see. Less welcome was the female face that joined it, framed by bright red hair and touched with that small, grim smile he’d learned not to trust.

“Welcome back.” Bruce greeted him softly.

“You had us scared for a second.” Natasha added with that same little twist of lips that usually had Tony making sure his back was to a wall.

“What...” His own voice was dry and papery in his ears, his tongue felt thick enough to chew.

“Don’t move. You’re in Malibu, you’re fine.” Natasha soothed as Bruce left his field of vision, making Tony’s heart lurch painfully...literally, painfully, the sudden elevation in his pulse from anxiety making his whole chest throb.

“You were injured in the fight.” Bruce’s voice informed him. A moment later, he felt his head being lifted, Bruce’s warm fingers at his nape, and ohhhh, there was _water_ , cool and sweet trickling past his lips. Bruce let him have two swallows before he pulled the cup away and settled Tony’s head back on the pillow. He imagined, just for a second, that Bruce’s fingertips lingered just a little as he drew his hand away.

“How the hell did you know?” he slurred, blinking hard and fast as he tried to make his vision focus better.

“We didn’t.” Natasha replied, her gaze lifting to Bruce, luminous eyes strangely focused on the other man. “He did.”

Slowly, Tony realized just who she meant, and felt his blood run cold in a way that had nothing to do with...well...whatever had been done to him, and he could already feel some serious chills building.

Reaching up slowly, fumbling only a little, Tony lay a hand against his chest and met with the familiar touch of gauze, this time cool and clean under his fingers. 

“How am I still alive?” he murmured, turning his head just enough to focus on Bruce, blinking owlishly. “How, for that matter, did you punch me like the Other Guy w’thout being green? ‘Cause I ‘member that.”

Bruce blushed, Tony could see it even in the low light, smiling with no small measure of chagrin.

“I’ll leave you two alone.” Natasha suddenly offered, sharing a look with Bruce that Tony didn’t understand, but knew he didn’t like. At all. It was too...close, too warm.

He forgave her when she kept her word and left, and then it was just Bruce and him again...and a knot he didn’t know was there eased, letting him breathe more deeply and hurt less intensely. Tony felt himself slide into that strange state of consciousness he only found around Bruce, where everything wasn’t quite so...hard. Because it was Bruce and Tony, Tony and Bruce...they were a thing, collectively, Tonyandbruce. Or Bruceandtony...

“Give it to me straight, Doc.” He murmured, watching Bruce’s face as he shuffled closer, staring down at Tony. “Will I ever pose for Playgirl again?”

Bruce huffed softly with a weak laugh, the sardonic little smile making his face glow with something that tightened Tony’s raw and aching chest.

“I probably shouldn’t have hit you, but...that wasn’t all me.” Bruce admitted, shifting to sit on the edge of Tony’s gurney. His hip and thigh pressed against Tony’s, warm and solid. Tony didn’t ask him to move.

“S’ok, I probably deserved it.”

“Oh, you did. You had an episode of brachycardia after he knocked you out. Natasha told me what the Other Guy did during that fight, and I was able to piece it together. He wasn’t being an ass, he knew you got hurt...and somehow, he thought I could help you, he just needed to let someone else know it, then tell me. Seems JARVIS felt the same way.”

Tony’s eyes rolled up to survey the room. “You did?”

JARVIS didn’t answer right away, but finally he spoke with audible reluctance.

_“When it was clear you were in distress, I showed Dr. Banner the results of our workup...and I asked him, please...to save you.”_

Tony found himself blinking hard again as he drew a shaky sigh, his eyes blurring for a new reason as Bruce shifted and continued speaking. Tony imagined that he did it to get closer, imagined that his leg pressed just a little harder against his.

“Guess you did.” Tony murmured quietly, avoiding Bruce’s gaze for a moment.

“Yeah...the helicarrier brought us to Malibu, chopper flew us down to the house. JARVIS gave me run of the lab, and Dum-E and U lent me a hand with the procedure.”

“JARVIS said--”

“JARVIS didn’t study nuclear medicine with two cardio-thoracic specialists that graduated _egregia cum laude_ from John Hopkins, and doesn’t know the structure of your chest plate as well as I do, thanks to all the work we’ve been doing on the converter.” Bruce pointed out with a raised eyebrow and a smile. “Got a little advice from a friend, and I won’t gross you out with the specifics? But I managed to shift the casing back into place, then removal was easy. JARVIS helped me machine a completely new setup, complete with a couple of upgrades.”

“Upgrades?”

“Some stuff I was going to run by you before the Rock Biters hit us. I came up with a shunt system for the casing that will dispense the synthetic glucose once the converter is ready. We added it to the casing with a cap that will prevent leakage until we’re ready to move forward.”

Tony nodded, and for a second they just sat there, quiet...not really silent, there was worlds they weren’t saying in the stillness, questions that needed asking about why Tony ran when he knew he was dying, why Bruce hadn’t hulked out completely when he hit him, why Natasha was there and how the hell Bruce managed to get Dum-E and U to work with any sort of efficiency, but their bodies connected at that point of heat between hip and thigh through loose cotton scrubs and denim. For a second, it was enough just to sit there and feel that heat.

Then Tony yawned, and he thought he saw Bruce glance upwards at the ceiling, as if someone was watching, waiting for a signal. He started feeling sleepy again, but Bruce was there, and he hurt like hell, head to foot, so Tony just sort of let it happen. Hell, if Bruce could get those rust-bucket droids of his to do anything right, nothing ought to blow up while he took a nap, right? Right...

Tony imagined he felt a press of heat against his cheek, a brush of lips against his forehead, and soon he was dreaming about someone holding his heart in their hands...and for the first time in ages, Tony wasn’t scared.


End file.
